We have a tendency to believe the lies we have collected over a period of our lifetime which are stuck in our heads. These are the voices of either our parents who communicated to us that we were not worthy of love, or the cruel bullies who put us down when we were children, or ignorant teachers who communicated to us that we were not smart enough. It is the voice of our social system that programs us to perform and compete in the areas where we were never meant to perform anyway because it was never the area of our giftedness and which punishes us when we fail. It is the religious institutions that preached to us, drilling that we must be 'good enough' to earn our salvation and go to heaven...What this does is causes us SHAME ('Self Hatred Aimed at ME' - Dr. David Allen) which causes us to create false selves, put on masks, so that we perform and dance the dance of perfection in the eyes of the spectators, until they find something else to hate on...then we create more false selves and put on more masks trying to conform to this world and please people...It's a cycle, and looking from outside in we look really good doing it, covering up our trues self and our shame...
Full acceptance of the fact that I am never going to be perfect and I am never going to measure up to someone's complete expectations nor will I ever be good enough in the eyes of every human being (and thank God I do not need to be) - is freedom! This is what liberating yourself from mental slavery is all about - to stop being people pleasers and embracing our humanness...the truth is, we really are not that good and we are not worthy, but it is also true that it is not expected of us...
Instead, it is the revelation that it is not by works, not by my own effort that I am made perfect, but by God's love manifested in Christ. It is the realisation that it is because of our shortcomings that we need Christ who took on my sin and my shame and gave me Himself, thus making me perfect! Today I am reminded that Christ took my imperfections, my insecurities and my sin and His blood covers me and washes me clean...I am made perfect through Him alone!
...and for that I am thankful...
"Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
~ Philippians 3:12-14
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